Good Morning Black Betty fans.
Since before dark last night, we have mostly been running downwind like a cheetah that has drunk 17 litres of Red Bull chasing a fresh steak! The breeze has been just perfect, and we have been making the most of it with Mr Medium weight the 3rd. As the morning has gone on, the breeze has been steadily building, and our boat speed is certainly benefiting from that, in the past three hours we have averaged 13.6 knots. In the last position report we were showing in 10th, finally a change after spending the majority of this race at the back of the pack. With this decent breeze and a building swell we are seeing some decent surfs, often well up into the high teens. At the lunchtime watch change just now, RTW'er Rachel, was most upset when she heard that I had beaten the current record for this race, set by her of 18.3 knots. During the course of the morning, I was having a play on the helm and managed a couple of surfs just in excess of 20 knots, but according to Rach, this doesn't count because, and I quote "you're the Skipper, so it doesn't count". Quite how that works, I'm not sure, but secretly she must think it counts because right now she is back on the helm surfing every wave she can get, and is determined to break the new (doesn't count) record!
In the last 24 hours, we have also started and finished our ocean sprint. We started the sprint a little further east than I would have liked, but to have pushed further west before crossing the start latitude would have seen us lose miles on the fleet, this was a sacrifice I was not willing to make. It was clear that we had more favourable wind for the sprint than our only rival, Qingdao, but it's essential to not get complacent so we still went for the shortest route and best speed. As we pushed south, under kite, it became clear that we were sailing out of the breeze, so a gybe west was required, the none making gybe, but it was a rock and a hard place, continue south and sail in to lighter airs and go slower, or sail west, making very little progress the way we want to go in order to get back to more wind. Decision made and it was time to gybe. The on watch did an excellent job, less than 5 minutes after I popped out of the hatch and said “'let's gybe” and we were all done, set on our new course and tidying up the lines. Bish, bash, bosh - job done! A couple of hours later, we had found the extra wind we were looking for and it was time to gybe back, and guess what? That's right, Black Betty's Black Cat...It was darker on deck than a really dark thing, in a really dark place trying its hardest to be darker than a black hole. The opposite watch was now on, and it was their time to shine. With a quick brief to establish job roles, it was time to throw the wheel over. In the black of night, the guys and girls absolutely nailed it, an excellent job team. Both watches should be really proud of those manoeuvres yesterday. Gybing with a kite up in some decent breeze presents many different potential opportunities to get in to a bit of a pickle, but neither watch missed a beat, every role was performed perfectly at exactly the right time. The best way to describe last night's gybes would be slick, not just regular slick, but slicker than a slippery snake, covered in Castrol GTX, that has been caught up in an explosion in a baby oil factory, whilst wearing Teflon trousers! (quite how a snake wears trousers I'm not sure!?) Our skill set and teamwork have come a long, long way since starting Leg 5 back in Airlie Beach, and I'm super proud of everyone's efforts.
Serpentine's aside, back to the ocean sprint. We covered the 120 miles north to south distance in a good time, evidently the prevailing conditions were a big part of that, and that is ocean racing, sometimes the weather gives you an edge and sometimes it doesn't. Now I'm not going to start pointing at eggs and calling them chickens, but I'm pretty confident that our time will be faster than Qingdao's, so that will be a very welcome three bonus points for this race.
Having read through yesterday's skipper blogs, it didn't go unnoticed that the tea guzzling, music-quoting Captain Josh of Ha Long Bay, Viet Nam cast some pretty serious allegations of my blogs often containing toilet humor, so just for you Captain Bristol...Why did the baker's hands smell? Because he kneaded a poo!
Now with that out of the way, on to what's left of the race course. Right now, at the time of writing we have 444.4 miles between us and the line. It looks like Unicef and Qingdao have gone for the points at the eastern gate, and Visit Sanya, China are hot on their heels for the final bonus point available at that gate. As the most eastern boat in the fleet, it is highly unlikely that we would be able to make our way over to the western gate in time for there to be any points left, so we will have to leave that one for the remaining seven boats to scrap over. Hopefully, while they are doing this we can focus on continuing our climb up the leaderboard. I think, just like the last race, the final few hundred miles of this one will be the edge of your seat, keep refreshing the Race Viewer stuff. Get ready to keep sneaking a peek that Race Viewer at every opportunity you get, things have the potential to get very interesting again.
Black Betty OUT!